The surprising way Amazon's head video exec develops new shows

Price, who is in charge of Amazon's original shows like "Transparent" and "Mozart in the Jungle," tells Hollywood Reporter that he developed those and other shows with pictures on Pinterest, instead of with words.

"I have notions for the show, but I don't write anything down," Price says. "Get a hundred pictures that really capture it and put them on Pinterest and you don't have to pitch — you can just show people."

It seems to be working: "Transparent" made history earlier this year when it won a Golden Globe for the best TV comedy and crowning Amazon as the first online streaming service ever to take home a prize. That prize prompted CEO Jeff Bezos to declare that Amazon is also the first company to use a Golden Globe to sell toilet paper.

The production house spent more than $100 million on original video content in Q3 of 2014 alone, a cost it justifies with the "sell more toilet paper" idea.

Amazon hopes that having a slew of great original shows will convince more people to sign up for its $99-a-year membership service, Amazon Prime. The more Prime members, the better: Subscribers spend more than double on the site than non-members do.

One way you can think about TV is you can say, "I want to make something that millions and millions of people are going to watch." If that's your starting point, you paint yourself into a corner and you often end up with homogenized, uninteresting content. If you say, "Let's hire the world's greatest storytellers. Let's encourage them to take risks," then you're going to end up with a remarkable story, and remarkable stories always find an audience.

"Pinterest is a boundless catalog of ideas for all types of people and interests. We often hear from Pinners that it's easier to unlock creativity through visuals when discovering something new, and we're delighted to learn of new use cases every day," Pinterest's head of brand and growth David Rubin told Business Insider via email.